The name’s Bond... Samantha Bond in fact, the actress famous from the James Bond films and countless other dramas such as ‘Downton Abbey’, who is special guest at a festival of music and antiques in London next weekend.

A packed saleroom and a continuous barrage of phone bids combined to ensure a near sell-out, multi-estimate result at Sotheby’s in Paris for their three-session auction (in association with Artcurial) of the collection of Félix Marcilhac.

Dreweatts achieved their highest price to date in the Asian art market when an 18th century Sino-Tibetan thangka depicting the Milarepa cult sold for £450,000 at the firm’s first sale marking their participation in the Asian Art in London initiative.

It was not the oak case that made this George III eight-day longcase clock such an attractive lot at Batemans of Stamford – it was the movement and face which bore the magic name of Thomas Ogden of Halifax.

For ten years now, London’s ‘Frieze’ art fair has been a temple that consigns itself strictly to the new and the now. Dedicated to art produced after the year 2000, collectors, curators and the general public have flocked to see the spectacle and view the next big thing.

This image shows artist Fred Cuming (b.1936) viewing one of his own paintings depicting his studio in Hythe. It was a work he had not seen for 42 years until it turned up for an auction taking place on September 19.